The Bare­foot Sur­geon (Allen & Un­win), by Ali Grip­per

This is the story of a boy from the low­est tiers of a rigid caste sys­tem who grew up in a small, re­mote Himalayan vil­lage with no school, to be­come one of the most re­spected oph­thal­mol­o­gists in the world and a med­i­cal gi­ant of Asia. Dr San­duk Ruit took on the world’s med­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment to give the life-chang­ing gift of sight to hun­dreds of thou­sands of the world’s poor­est and most iso­lated peo­ple. Ac­tor Richard Gere is just one of the good doc­tor’s fans: “I’ve known Dr San­duk Ruit for over 30 years. He is one of our great­est liv­ing eye sur­geons and hu­man­i­tar­i­ans … watch­ing him give the gift of sight is like watch­ing some­one give a sec­ond life.” Ruit’s men­tor was Aus­tralian doc­tor Fred Hol­lows (whose foun­da­tion has a pres­ence in PNG) and it is no co­in­ci­dence that both men chose to defy the world’s med­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment, and its lure of riches, to of­fer the wealth of sight to those in need.